GZG 8 Brief AAR + Quote Correction

<UNCLOAK>

Friday: 

Drive down with Kevin Fox (new to ECC) and Adrian Johnson. Arrive in
time to setup and run
"Stargrunt Pickup Game" which became known (for map reasons) as "Grey
Rocks vs. Brown Rocks". 
Watched Laserlight demonstrate that he has a relationship with the
infernal, as that is
all that could explain his amazing resistance to enemy fire... Bob
'Magic' Makowksy tried,
then gave up and surrendered. Kevin managed to close assault a
suppressed unit, and run
into another along the way, walk through a hail of fire, then assault a
smaller, lesser
quality unit. And in the end, his 7 or 8 elites lay dead, and the
regulars (or vets) on
the other side lost one figure. (Yes Kevin, it is okay to roll numbers
higher than 3 on
d12...) Grey Rocks win hands down. Bob Makowsky surrenders half his
squad, but they live. 

Saturday: 

Paint figures with Rick Rutherford. Learn a few more techniques from
Rick. Share some
knowledge in return I hope. Good clinic. Joel Frock, Adrian Johnson,
Kevin Fox and I have
variously spoken about the idea of running a terrain building seminar.
Perhaps next year
we can do that. 

Spend the afternoon getting the kinks out of Weight of Command, as it is
a major
undertaking and could not be tested full scale ahead of time. Smaller
tests don't cover
all coordination issues. Needed to get a wireless network in place,
Teamspeak up and
active, prove the system, print out some more squad cards, lay out
figures into units, get
our image processing on the go, photograph some 'pre game intel'
pictures then muddy them
up with night vision green and noise filters, etc. Went out for Java
with Bob, Los, and
Kr'rt and found the world's most comfortable couch. Nearly a critical
game abort as the
couch sucked us in. But professionalism overcame comfort. The game must
go on. 

Saturday night, executed a 45 minute briefing and planning section for
the players, a 3
hour and fifteen minute game, and a 45 minute post-game debrief/lessons
learned/behind the
curtains event. There were various objectives - to show what it is like
operating as or
with off board commander, where the on board commanders get instructions
that aren't
always relevant or timely and the off board commander, the only one with
a real idea what
is going on, is constantly lacking a complete picture and is recieving
it with hysterisis.
Also, we wanted it to demonstrate what happens when instructions or
dataflow is less than
precise. And we wanted to put the players in a place where they had to
make situational
decisions without full facts. And where players on the game boards had
to adapt rapidly to
changing pressures and to off-board command influences and the commander
had to deal with
out-of-game UN HQ and civilian government pressures. All in all, it went
well. 

Interesting points:
- Info for the UN HQ Cmdr was 'a day late and a dollar short'. His
commands arrived
sometimes late (authorizing weapons free on a particular unit three or
four game rounds
after the players on the board had went weapons free). But that was
expected. 
- Experienced the confusion of having the mission target reported in two
places and the
resulting back-and-forth of orders from higher HQ. This too was
expected. 
- Experienced the on-board commanders deciding which orders to obey and
which to
'interpret creatively' in view of their own SA. This too was expected. 
- Experienced examples of units on different comm nets not coordinating
(UN APCs driving
off and leaving R&S elements sitting there with their thumbs out - and
forcing them to
hotwire a civilian truck to escape the WMD blast radius). This was
unexpected, but goes on
in real life as each unit follows its own orders.
- Watched some very inventive play. Beth's UN HQ rescued some young
schoolkids instants
before the WMD should have went off, bribing them with candy. This same
unit also served
as a distraction when Aaron's unit of UN PA prepared for a 'through the
floor' assault on
the terrorists with the WMD in the church basement. Said tangos were
located by Aaron
using the advanced sensors in his PA, an inventive idea. All in all, a
number of inventive
ideas came forth (in the briefing and during the game). They were
unexpected, sometimes
surprising, and a lot of fun. 
- At the end of the game, due to Philip Pournelle commanding the
'snatch' board, he did
not pass on to his troops the presence of the WMD. At end-game, the guys
on that board
said 'we though everything was just going as planned, no idea anything
was wrong' and the
guys at HQ said 'that board looks calm' (Phil restricted info flow
upwards too) and Bravo
board (the WMD board) looked chaotic to higher HQ and its players. Now,
part of this was
expected (Bravo had to deal with a mid-game change and the appearance of
unbriefed heavily
armoured hostile forces). Part of it is just a result of how things were
played. But the
experiences of players on Alpha board and Beta Board and in the HQ were
each distinct from
one another. 
- Ref's are preparing a proper AAR and summary. We are also preparing a
study of what went
right from the perspective of running one of these and what went wrong
and what we think
can address that in later iterations of similar types of command
simulator. This way,
perhaps, we can offer others insight into the process and if anyone else
wants to try this
(or if we do it again a year or two hence), the job will be easier. 

Then a bunch of us Canucks plus Tom Tongue sat up until the wee hours
drinking beer and
chatting. It wouldn't be ECC without late nights. The abscence of a bar
really sucked
though. It meant we couldn't even drink beer in the comfy chairs with a
table and play a
game. Hopefully they will rememdy this. 

Sunday

Cleaned up from TWOC. John Davis asked me to run a quick game of SG for
some latecomers
who were new to the game. I did so, and the Africans were gradually
beaten to death by the
Gurkhas, even though the Africans had pretty good tactics. This game saw
more close
assaults than I have seen in some time (4 or 5). I think it was a good
intro for the new
guys. 

Overall Comments:
- I missed the street preacher and Phil Pournelle exchanging bon mots. I
wish I'd seen that. 
- Concession cart? Why the (*&@!! didn't we have one before! That's a
great idea! Kudos to
Mr. Calivari (Nee Davis) for making this happen, along with every other
of the billion
things the Con Committee does for us for which we do not thank them
enough. Without them,
no word of a lie, there would not BE a GZG ECC. Boys, I'm tipping a beer
to you. Everyone
else: Get in there and volunteer to help in the coming years!
- I was very happy to meet Beth. I *wish* I'd known she was coming. I'd
have brought her a
present down from Canada like some Maple Syrup. <sigh> Next time. Or
I'll have to go to Oz
for a Con. Pity she couldn't fit Derek in her suitcase. Or Lachlan and
Janneke and the
others. 
- To Los, thanks brother. You're a great guy and wonderful to work with.
And you always
have cool pix and stories. 
- To Cmdr. Makowsky, USCG. You're my kinda guy Bob. And the promotion
was well deserved.
And the picture of your crew and you with Ollie North was a neat item.
Fun working with you. 
- To Weasel Boy Wasserman, merci for all your assistance. Good to see
you again, wonderful
fun working with you, thanks for the tech support for the game and the
BB. You are the
King, baby. 
- To Kevin Fox, thanks 1000x for painting so many wonderful figures for
me over the past
year. Thanks for 17 or 18 years of wonderful friendship. And thanks for
helping out in our
game Saturday night. 
- To Rick Rutherford, thanks for teaching me more painting tricks. :) 
- To JP, Jim, Tom, Chris, Adrian, Kevin, Mike Sarno, Mike Hudak, and
others - thanks for
the outrageous good natured burning that keeps my ego in check. I
generously *assume* that
it is good natured. :) 
- No Kra'Vak you say? I think we need a sequel to "The Weight of Command
during a Grey Day
on Carter Island!".... and it has to have Kra'Vak. 

TomB 

PS, I'm back. I've been on the test list for a long time. 

PPS - Quote Correction: 
The comment about latex had to do with crossing the border. Several
funny comments were
made by the Canucks this year "It was a latex-free crossing." (JP?), or
"Do you have
anything to Declare? Yep! I'm allergic to Latex!" (Tomb)

============

Quotes from TWOC:

Tom McCarthy, during the briefing, when told that escalation of force
was not acceptable
under ROE:
"Just watch me."

Magic, talking to Tomb: 
"You know that rad spike that UN science observation reported to Mark?
He thought it
correlated with Tom's Fusion gun fire. That's what he reported to higher
HQ. He even sent
them a picture of the car." (The car had been burning as a result of a
crash caused by a
carefully aimed rifle volley at the tires, and the rad spike was from
the preparation of
the WMD...NOT Tom's fusion gun fire, which also had not touched the car)

Tom McCarthy, after hearing on the radio that Weapons Free had been
given on the Mercs he
was fighting (and on whom had been using the heavy plasma gun already
for several turns):
"Ah. I have my hacker get to work on the timestamp on those image logs."

Tom McCarthy to Beth Fulton:
"You can fire your fusion guns at them. It won't do anything but
suppress them." 
(Tom had fired twice, and I had rolled really well for the defence)
(Beth fired, and wounded 3 out of 4 in the squad and killed the other).
(This was also where the comment about being court martialled for what
HE (Tom McCarthy)
had already done arose)

Over the radio from UN OpCO at HQ Kochte: Amnesty is not authorized at
this time. UN HQ
directs you negotiate with them in the strongest possible terms. In the
CO's exact words
"Tell them it would be in their best interest to surrender". 
Beth Fulton, to the Arms Dealers less than 30 seconds later: "I offer
them Amnesty."

Beth has captured a bunch of mercenaries, including their leader. There
is a WMD with 28
seconds left on it. 
GM: You wish to interrogate the Arms Dealer leader. How far do you go?
Beth: As far as necessary.
GM: <rolls some dice, Beth rolls some> Well, it looks like he was
thinking about talking
before he died. You ripped his arms off. 

Beth, interrogating the next merc after the leader's body topples to the
floor: 
"Is there anyone else who knows the code?"
Scared Merc: "Y..yyesss! The XO! He got away in a boat!"
Beth, looking at the squad she previously close assaulted near the shore
and the dead
single figure out there with a pistol. "Crap."

Tom McCarthy, fleeing from the the board with the other UN troops in
various APCs:
"I just drove over onto the other board. Aaron (Newman)'s guys just
asked me if I was
there to give them a lift." (Tom had a big grin on his face - I feared
the worst)
Shortly after, talking to Aaron:
"I was trying to get my R&S elements out. The CO radioed and said 'just
catch a lift on
one of the APCs'. I replied - you mean the ones that just drove by?"
(Aaron had to hotwire a truck to save his guys. Good thing he asked me
ahead of time if
his guys had those kind of skills... *grin*)

Aaron Teske's radioactively contaminated Hero, who had single handedly
disarmed the bomb
by removing the core, talking to his CO Beth: "I'm going to come join up
with you guys. I
disarmed the bomb." 
Beth: "Negative. Procede to the park, we'll get you some evac." (knowing
he was 'Hot')
Shortly after, Aaron is in the park, and Mark's Command VTOL arrives,
and he asks to be
picked up. Mark's rad gear goes off. Aaron is instructed to cable-hitch
himself to a
tow-hook on the outside.... Fine thanks for a hero. 

<CLOAK>